Jack Chalker - Charon - A Dragon at the Gate

“But that was forty or more years ago,” I noted. “She’s not nearly two-thirds that old.”

He nodded. “And that, my friend, means that somebody has kept the thing going after it was ordered closed. Somebody who kept the secret from just about everybody except his own immediate family. It would give that person a tremendous edge.”

“She said something about the Triana family,” I said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know them, but it might be a real family and not a Brethren one. Still, you see what this means? A fifth Lord, a secret one, in the game for maybe forty years.”

“Morah. It has to be Morah.”

“I agree. And yet Morah closed down the thing and exposed at least one, maybe all, the remaining ones. Why?”

“Well, I can think of one reason,” I told him.

“Huh?”

“With organic super-robots and an alien force behind him he didn’t need them anymore. Not there, anyway.”

“Perhaps. But why did he need them here! And why, once here, didn’t he use her?”

He thought a moment. “Maybe he wasn’t ready to use her yet.”

It was my turn. “Huh?”

“Suppose there aren’t many of these—people. Suppose there are only, maybe, four of them. You remember Morah’s getaway in the square at Bourget?”

“The four-headed hydra.”

“And now Kreegan’s dead. Remember—Dumonia said it •wasn’t the assassin who got him. A fluke, he called it.” He looked straight at me. “And Morah’s seen, met with, talked with those aliens face to face.”

I finally saw where he was going. “So Korman might not have known. Or Aeolia Matuze either.”

He nodded. “The Confederacy might not be the only ones trying to knock off the Four Lords. In fact, the Confederacy might just be doing Yatek Morah a favor.

“Not Four Lords of the Diamond—but one.”

“That girl—Zala or Kira or whoever she is—worries you, doesn’t she?” Darva asked.

I nodded. “Not the Zala part There’s something even likable about Zala. But ever since Korman told me about the other part of her I’ve wanted to meet that part—and now that I have, I’m not sure I should have forced it.”

“I guess I’ll never understand you,” she sighed. “You force her out, then get really unhappy about it. Why? Isn’t Kira more or less the same type as you?”

I whirled and felt my blood pressure go up. I paused a moment to try and get control of myself. I was going to make a nasty remark and strong denial, but Darva had really hit the nail on the head. Admitting that to myself calmed me down.

“All right. Yes, in a way. Never that cold, that unemotional, but, yes, she is a lot like I used to be. The way I still really think of myself. But she’s me stripped down to the least common denominator. No morality, no cause, no feelings of any sort. That’s what those biotechs managed with that two-mind technique. She’s able to shift all her emotions, morals, feelings into Zala. It gives Kira the mind of a computer, unencumbered by any traces of—well, humanity. Zala may be dumb, shallow, and not good for much, but she’s all that’s human in that body and brain. And, still, when I look at Kara, talk to her, I see—me.” I see a man I used to be, sitting up there, a third of a light-year off the Warden system, I added to myself.

And, in fact, just how different was Kira from that man up there? Outside of assignments, psych blocked and mostly wiped, he was really nothing more than a Zala with money. A playboy in the haunts of the rich and powerful, contributing little and totally hedonistic. The only difference between Kira and me, deep down, was that when I got all that information back before a mission, like now, I still had at my base that other man, that playboy lover of fun. Kira, on the other hand, experienced everything vicariously and never felt that her cover was anything more than that—certainly not a part of her.

The technique by which Zala/Kira had been formed remained a mystery. The medics here had poked and probed and found nothing. Her brain, aside from the Warden organisms’ odd grouping, appeared normal. Nothing in medical science could pinpoint the difference in any way. And yet it was not a psych technique, or some mental aberration—the wa showed clearly a true biological division there somewhere.

To look into a mirror, to see such a personality—the perfect assassin—and see in all its ugliness the perfection of those qualities you always prided yourself on, this was the problem. Nor did I have the faith, the moral certitude, any more that I was on the side of right, justice, and good. Charon and its viewpoints and my own experiences here had killed that certainty, and even though I was still, for now, on the same side, I was there because the opposition repelled me, not out of any lingering loyalty to the Confederacy ideal. Had this, I wondered, happened to the others, my counterparts on Lilith, Cerberus, and Medusa? I knew this—I was more completely human now than ever before, and both the weaker for it and yet, somehow, whole as Kira was not and might never be.

Explaining all this to Darva wasn’t easy. Although it helped to share it and talk it out, the fact was she could never fully understand. She hadn’t been raised to believe.

And that, in the end, was the bottom line of difference between Kira and me. I had been a believer who lost his faith but found his humanity. She had never believed in anything, and, because of that, could never find or even fully comprehend her own humanity. I had been literally reduced to the animal on Charon and been reborn a human. Kira was reduced to the machine and locked there for all time.

In a sense, she’d forced me to take a good, hard look at myself—and in the process, I was free. The last bonds were cut. Like that little Cerberan, Dumonia, I severed my last ties to my past and stayed allied with it only because, for the moment, our interests coincided.

For the first time I reached back and examined myself, and much to my surprise, was able to locate through my own wa that tiny piece of organic goo in my brain. Still there. From Lacoch to changeling to bunhar to changeling again, it had somehow survived. So you’re still listening, my brother out there? My… Kira.

Koril looked grim-faced. His office was littered with reports and photos, and he wasn’t pleased with whatever they said.

He got straight to the point. “We have been compromised. After all these years, we’ve been compromised.”

“Somebody got word out?”

He nodded. “Somehow. I’m not sure how. But this complex is doomed, Park. It’s only a matter of time. Oh, it’s safe enough against ground assault, but once its location is known they could bring in heavy stuff, off-planet stuff, and fry hell out of us.”

“Then why haven’t they?”

He smiled. “Funny. Basically because the Confederacy monitors the system so well. They don’t have the heavy weapons on Charon to do the job, and if they tried to get them they’d be shot to hell in space. To hit us hard they’d have to bring in one of their alien friends’ vessels—and that would force them into the open. But it’s only a matter of time until they work out some way to fool our Wardens.”

“How much time?” I asked uneasily.

“Who knows? A day? A week? A month? A minute from now? Whenever they can work it out. We can’t take the chance of its being long.” He sat back in his chair, and for the first time he looked very old, old and incredibly tired. “Well, perhaps it’s for the best. To end it, one way or the other, once and for all. He looked up at me, the weight of his decision showing in his face. “You know, Park, for the first time I realize how I’ve been kidding myself all these years. I enjoyed this place. I loved the research, the peace, the lack of demands. I even loved being the rebel leader. It was far more of a challenge to be the opposition than to actually run the place. It’s funny—always preparing but never acting. That’s just what Dumonia was saying the other—son of a bitch!”